


The Badger Fic

by marcicat



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Fast and the Furious Series, Inception (2010), Stonehenge Apocalypse (2010), Tron (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-22
Updated: 2011-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:03:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcicat/pseuds/marcicat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The movies-only multi-fandom silliness project.  Inspired by the Badger balm slogan:  “Seriously, if I were lost in some remote place, I’d want my badger with me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Badger Fic

_“Seriously, if I were lost in some remote place, I’d want my badger with me.”_

 

TRON

They were back in the Grid in less time than he'd expected, actually.  Even if Sam hadn't wanted to (which he did), he wasn't about to tell Quorra she'd have to go by herself.  

And of course, there was Alan.  They were smart enough to change the arrival point to somewhere less conspicuous when they went back, at least, and they didn't show up without a plan.

"Sam."  Alan's voice was even.  

"Yeah?"

"What is that?"  

Alan wasn't looking out at the city.  He was staring at Sam's feet, or rather, the program currently sitting on them.

"This is Badger.  You know, she's the search program I've been working on."  He knelt down to scratch behind the ears.  So he had a problem with the idea of programming people.  Animals were better anyway, as far as he was concerned.  "Hey, girl.  You ready for this?"

Badger snorted.  One clawed foot flexed into the ground, and lines of code lit up all around it.

"Of course you are.  Let's start with a couple of light-cycle wands, okay?"

She raced off, and Alan sighed.  "Do I even want to know what 'Badger' stands for?"

Sam grinned.  "I told you, she's a search program.  'Badass DOS-Grabbing Encoded Reader.'"  He thought for a minute, then added, "She picks locks, too."

Alan just shook his head.  "Of course she does."

 

INCEPTION

"What about animals?"

There was a slight pause before Miles said, "What about them?"

At first she'd thought it was a peculiarity specific to Cobb's team, but it held true with just about every dream worker she'd met (even the non-thieves).  They weren't big on volunteering information; vague questions tended to go unanswered.  She couldn't be the only person to ever wonder about the lack of animals in the dream space, though.

"Well, the dreamer's subconscious attacks when it recognizes an outside influence changing things, right?  But what if the change was something generated by the dreamer?"

She put a hand in her purse as they walked.  Looked down from time to time, as if checking on something inside it.  "Normal people dream about animals all the time," she said calmly.  

"It won't work," Miles said.  "The animal would still be the dreamer's projection."

Ariadne barely restrained a smile when she switched her 'fishing around looking for something' hand motions to 'I'm patting something but it's small and adorable and you can't see it inside this handbag.'  There was something she hadn't told Miles before she'd proposed her thought experiment.  Namely, that she'd done this before.

Two projections gave her bag interested glances before Miles cut off his explanation.  "What have you got in there, Ariadne?" he asked.  It was his dream, after all.

She reached her other hand into the bag as well, and pulled out her passenger.  It was a baby, of course -- it would have to be, to fit into her handbag.  

"What is that?"  Miles peered at the tiny creature.  He sounded more intrigued than upset, and this time Ariadne didn't hide her smile.  

"She's a badger.  For some reason, they always are."

 

VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER (CHRONICLES OF NARNIA)

One minute he was contemplating an evening of plenty, the next he was dumped unceremoniously into a clearing that was both dark and cold, and most definitely did not contain his dining room table.  

"Oi!  I was just sitting down to supper!"

"Oh, wow.  Okay.  Sorry."

Badger looked the girl up and down.  She was dressed oddly for Narnia -- then again, the landscape didn't look particularly Narnia-like either.  

He supposed there was a vague resemblance, though, around the eyes.  "Jill?  Is that you?"

The girl clapped her hands over her mouth.  She shook her head slowly.  "No," she said finally.  "No, not exactly."

No further information was forthcoming, even though he waited a good ten-count (which was eight counts longer than he was inclined, if he was honest).  "Right then, if you could just send me back, in that case?"

There were shouts in the distance, the sound of things crashing through the wood.  The girl who wasn't Jill shivered.  "I can't," she said in a rush.  "I don't know how I called you in the first place, and I'm sorry, but we really need to get out of here now.  Unless you -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- unless you have a key back to Narnia, we should probably run."

_Back_ to Narnia?  Well.  The mind boggled, didn't it?

The crashing got closer, and not-Jill grabbed his paw.  "Run!" she said.

It turned out that running through a forest didn't change much no matter what world you found yourself in.  That is to say, it was generally pretty easy for badgers (particularly after he got his paw back), and he loped along until they reached another clearing.

"Not much further," the girl panted.  "We're almost there."

Badger frowned.  "I suppose I should have asked this before, but you are aware that we're traveling in a circle?  And --" he considered, but there seemed to be no delicate way of framing the question.  "Why are we running?"  Badgers were, in all things, practical.  

"Sometimes the best way forward is back where you started," the girl said (which sounded quite Narnian to him, even if it didn't really answer the question).  "Back into a crowd is safest for me.  I don't think our world is quite ready for talking badgers, though."

He shrugged in what he hoped was a stoic and practical way.  

"I'm sorry I took you away from your dinner," she told him.  Then she looked up.  "And I'm sorry I called you the crazy relative," she offered to the sky.  "Since, hello -- talking badger."

"Should I shake your hand -- your paw, I mean?  Do you do that?"

It took him a moment to realize she was talking to him again, but he offered his paw solemnly.  "Might I know your name?" he asked.  He wasn't sure how, but he could feel the magic building, pulling him back to Aslan's country.  (He would eat out on this story for _many_ suppers.)

"It's Jane," she said.  "And thank you, for coming.  I -- didn't want to be alone, tonight."

"It was my honor," he said, pushing aside the clamoring questions he might have liked to ask.  "Perhaps we might meet again one day, and know each other better."

She dropped his paw and went in for the hug (which one came to expect if one spent any time at all around the Queens of Narnia).  "I'd like that very much."  

 

FAST & FURIOUS

"Dom, you're lost."

"No, I'm not."

Brian rolled his eyes, and shared a sympathetic glance with Dolores.  They hadn't actually exchanged names, but she looked like a Dolores to him.  "Come on, it's not like I'm trying to impugn your manhood or anything.  You're just more of an... urban jungle kind of guy, as opposed to a jungle jungle."

There was a snort that sounded like amusement, or possibly just intense irritation.  It was hard to tell, sometimes.  "Did you seriously just say 'impugn'?"

"If I say yes, will you seriously just stop and call Han?"

"No."  Finally, Dom turned around.  He narrowed his eyes.  "Brian.  What is that?"

Dolores waved a paw.  

He was pretty sure his own hand gesture was expansive enough to encompass the jungle, the so-called "trail," and Dolores, although it was hampered somewhat by his passenger.  Badgers, for all their qualities, weren't what he'd call small.  

"This?  This is how lost you are, Dom.  Not only is your badger here, she's been here long enough to get tired of walking and is now hitching a ride.  On me."

Dom's phone came out, finally, but -- "You're taking a picture.  Really?  I mean, it's not like I wouldn't just use my phone to call for directions, but oh yeah -- you broke it when you were trying to scare away the imaginary snake."

"Brazil reports over 20,000 snake bites every year," Dom said.  It was the same serious and reasonable tone he'd used when he'd taken the phone in the first place.

"Well, the good people of Brazil can rest easy, then, can't they?  Because that stick was certainly good and intimidated by the destruction of my phone."

"It could have been a snake."

"It wasn't."

They stared at each other, and Dolores took advantage of the pause to clamber over his shoulder to his backpack.  He was pretty sure she was gunning for his last honey stick.

Finally, Dom turned back to his phone.  "Right, I'm calling Han."  Like it was Brian who'd been leading them around the jungle for the last hour and a half.

Of course, Han wasn't a miracle worker; they were still going to have to hike out to the closest passable road for pickup.  It wasn't until another twenty minutes had passed that Dom said, "Why do you assume she's mine, anyway?  It's not me she's getting all chummy with."

"Seems pretty obvious to me."  He scratched behind Dolores' ears and watched Dom swat at mosquitoes that weren't there.  

"Oh yeah?  Why's that?"

Sometimes it was just too easy.  It would either get a punch or a laugh, and if he was honest with himself, either was better than boredom.  "Because I'm not lost."

There were about two seconds when it could have gone either way.  And then Dom was laughing, and he shook his head.  "You are a real piece of work, you know that?"  
  

STONEHENGE APOCALYPSE

“Am I dead?”

It was his first thought when he was suddenly — awake?  reanimated? — well, when he was aware of himself again.  The last thing he remembered was running towards Stonehenge, and trying to stop a global apocalypse wasn’t nearly as glamorous as the movies made it look, and -- holy -- he’d been shot!  Twice!

He looked down instinctively, but both his legs appeared to be fine and not shot up with bullets.  Which, hello, who shot someone in the leg when they were trying to stop them?  Either the guy had been aiming for a body shot and had terrible aim, or he'd been aiming for the legs and was a great shot but a damn poor strategist.  

(Or, he thought to himself, the guy had just been shooting at random, and it was his own bad luck that had led to his -- however temporary -- horrible crippling pain.  The real question, he supposed, was what the hell had happened next?  And where was he?)

"You don't look dead to me.  'Course, it's not like I'm an expert or anything."

Jacob froze.  He was already working pretty hard at ignoring the fact that he was lying on the ground and staring up at an unfamiliar starscape.  He wasn't sure he was also up to ignoring disembodied voices.

"Sorry, was that a rhetorical question?"

On the other hand, non-disembodied voices that were poking him weren't necessarily an improvement.  

He sat up.  Definitely not an improvement.  The good news, if you could call it that, was that the Earth was still not blown up.  In fact, it looked pretty pristine, but that could just be because it was so far away.  Because that was the bad news.  Apparently, at some point he definitely didn't remember, he'd _left the planet_.  He hesitated to say he'd ended up on the moon with a talking badger, but signs were definitely pointing in that direction.

"Is this the moon?"

The badger made a show of looking around.  "Not really sure, mate.  You'd know better than me.  Have you moved on from the dead or alive thing, then?"

"And you're a badger," Jacob said.  "That talks."

"Look, did you hit your head?  Because normally you're a lot quicker than this."

He considered.  "It's been a difficult few days."

The badger seemed to think about this.  "Right.  Well, that's perfectly understandable, I suppose.  Here's the scoop.  I'm your badger, you know, steadfast companion and all that.  You appear to be in a remote place, lost -- no offense, I'm just guessing based on our conversation so far, which is why I'm here.  Feeling better yet?"

He wasn't, really.  "So you're here to help me get -- unlost?"  He couldn't quite bring himself to say 'back to Earth.'  Which was a little disappointing, really.  For all he'd touted himself as an open-minded conspiracy buff, his brain was still stumbling over the idea that he might actually _be on the moon_.

"No, not really.  Us badgers are aces at the steadfast companion thing; not much of a sense of direction.  Good noses, I suppose."

There shouldn't be any air on the moon.  And yet, he was breathing, so why not ask?  "Can you smell anything?"

"Oh!  Right, I knew you were a smart one.  Sure. Smells like food that way."  The badger pointed a paw in the direction of some rocks.  (There weren't many great landmarks on the moon, it turned out -- just rocks, and more rocks.)

Jacob stared at the rocks, then at the badger.  "Are you kidding?" he asked.  

The badger stared back.  "Do I look like I'm kidding?"

And no, he really didn't.  Also, when it came right down to it, when the choice was between 'potential food' and 'barren wasteland,' it wasn't much of a choice at all.

Unfortunately, his brain couldn't seem to stop compiling a list of evidence, and most of it pointed to him being 1) completely and utterly insane, or 2) dead, and in some bizarre version of an afterlife.  He was on the moon, with a talking badger, and he was breathing air and walking around like it was a stroll in the park.  And -- he did a double-take when they rounded the last rock outcropping, but the view stubbornly refused to look like anything but a group of students having a barbecue.

"Hi there!" one of them called, waving him over.  "Sorry about that; we were coming to find you once the food was ready."

"Tough break about Stonehenge, man," another one said.  "I mean, who saw that coming?"

"Hi," Jacob said.  He took the offered plate of food absently -- the badger got one too, so either it was really there, or he was hallucinating all of them.  "Not to be rude, but... what am I doing here?"

One of the women nodded.  "Question of the ages.  Deep."

"I think he was speaking on a less metaphorical level," offered the one managing the grill.

The woman frowned.  "Oh.  Well, school trip, in that case.  I mean, that's what we're doing here.  We were supposed to be out looking at asteroids, but no one wanted to miss the big bang."

There was a moment of awkward silence, and several meaningful looks sent in his direction.  The woman rushed to add, "But we're glad, of course, that your planet didn't, um, explode, and all that."

"Want to help us bury some robot heads?" someone asked.  "It's kind of our thing.  Visit alien moons, set up a picnic, hide some cheap tech in out of the way spots."

"It's not really sanctioned by the school," the woman said.  "But neither is rescuing aliens from certain death, so --"

She trailed off and he figured that must be where he'd come in.  "Go big or go home?" he offered, and the group seemed to relax around him.

And it was sort of funny, when he thought about it.  Because what do you know?  It really _was_ a robot head.


End file.
